Radha's worry wasn't whether the girl was ready; it was how to fund the wedding. It had never crossed her mind to plan an event within her means. If she was to secure for her daughter an alliance that would get her out of the slums, she expected that she would have to meet the groom's family's highest standards for the nuptials. Wedding are, in general, the biggest lifetime expense for Indians of all income groups. Middle-class Hindu weddings mean a guest list tipping into the thousands and two full weeks of religion rituals, parties, and dinners——in other words, lifelong debt. In today's India of conspicuous spending and Bollywood glitz, the richest grooms arrive at their weddings in helicopters; their banquets feature extravagant flourishes such as spurting chocolate fountains. Indians spend an average of thirty-two thousand dollars on a wedding. That's seven thousand dollars more than the average American spends, even though Indians earn only 10 percent of the American per capita income.
Sideways on A Scooter, Life and Love in India, P197
Miranda Kennedy
ISBN 978-1-4000-6786-2
No comments :
Post a Comment